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Long lauded as the technology that would turn cities into techie meccas, WiFi continues to creep across metropolises.

Years after North American cities began to plan for the WiFi revolution, these ambitious projects remain slow in coming – and because the next generation of wireless technology is right around the corner, WiFi may soon be irrelevant anyway.

When it was announced last March, Toronto Hydro's network was praised by Mayor David Miller as an unprecedented leap forward into the information age.

The company had earlier paid $60 million to buy the city's streetlight poles. Attaching WiFi antennae to the poles created a mesh network that allows subscribers to access the Internet from anywhere inside the "hot zone."

There had been talk of blanketing the entire city within three years. Now, Hydro president David Dobbin says 4,000 subscribers would be required before making the leap to the rest of the city.

"We are ecstatically happy with how the zone is performing and how many are subscribing," Dobbin said.

Currently, the city's hotspot covers the blocks between Jarvis St. and Spadina Ave. to the east and west, and Front St. to Bloor St. to the south and north.

While Dobbin said he couldn't release the number of subscribers the network has, 43,000 passwords were given out during the hotspot's free trial period. In December, with the network complete, Toronto Hydro began to offer access to the Internet, paid for by the hour, day or month.

Since users had to start paying $30 a month for the service, "there has been a drop," said Dobbin. "But we're ahead of our 10 per cent conversion rate," he added, referring to those who went from free service to paid subscriptions.

But Toronto's six square kilometres of coverage seems less ambitious when compared with what's being built in Philadelphia. In May, 39 square kilometres of that city went WiFi.

By the end of the year, Philadelphia will be covered in a 350-square-kilometre hotspot.

That city can now boast one of the largest WiFi projects in the U.S.

Three years ago, a wireless Philadelphia was conceived as a municipal project that would help the city's poor get online. Less than half of the city is connected to the Internet, and the vast majority of those connected use outdated dial-up access, said Ryan Nichols, spokesperson for Wireless Philadelphia.

That project changed hands when telecom companies began to complain that municipal wireless would hinder competition. After years of political squabbling among the three levels of government, the project was handed over to Internet service provider EarthLink, which charges $19.95 (U.S.) per month for access.

Wireless Philadelphia has been granted 25,000 Internet accounts that cost about $10 per month for people in low-income households.

Similarly, Toronto Hydro Telecom has said it's in talks with Toronto Community Housing Corp. to offer low-priced access to underserved communities here.

In the U.S., EarthLink remains one of the leading WiFi providers, and is planning to put Philadelphia to shame with a 1,500-square-kilometre network across Houston – which is being advocated by community groups pushing literacy and claiming the technology would bridge the digital divide.

Similar networks are either built or being planned in Anaheim and Pasadena in California, Alexandria, Va., and New Orleans.

This year, EarthLink took over the municipal network in Corpus Christie, Tex.

In Toronto, the seeds for a city-wide hotspot began with the e-City initiative at City Hall.

"(WiFi) is something we need to do to compete with other cities in the world," Councillor Peter Milczyn said. "It's important to deploy new technologies."

Toronto Hydro got on the WiFi bandwagon when it decided to start using smart meters, in which energy data is collected over the wireless networks. Opening the network to public Internet use would be a way to bring in profit on an inevitable technological upgrade.

The major telecommunications companies haven't cheered on their newest municipal competition.

"They've asked, `Why are we doing this?'" Milczyn said. But "Bell and Telus have been slow in deploying a WiFi network across the city, which is one reason why Toronto Hydro Telecom jumped in."

One reason private companies may have been slow to the metro-WiFi market: it may not be such a good idea.

David Robinson, vice-president of business implementation at Rogers, said while WiFi worked well in locations like coffee shops, it would provide spotty coverage in areas crowded by trees and concrete. And it makes little sense to invest in the technology when its next incarnation, WiMax, is what the techies are buzzing about.

WiMax works much like WiFi, but can cover kilometres instead of metres and offer exponentially faster download times.

"I simply cannot comprehend why anyone would build a metropolitan WiFi network when WiMax is right around the corner, unless they're looking for a tax loss," Robinson said.

WiFi, he said, should remain the domain of café owners and small businesses who install free access to attract customers.

Patrick Dinnen, a volunteer with Wireless Toronto, a non-profit that helps small businesses outfit themselves with free WiFi Internet access, said Toronto is "far behind" when compared with cities in Europe and the West Coast.

Toronto Hydro's network "could have been more interesting if it were approached as a genuine municipal service," he said.

But as the hot spot covers the financial core, it's "not useful to people it may have been useful to."

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